Stories From Memory
by Sei-sama
Summary: Just some drabbles, most of them will be probably cutesy and concerning Ellie and Carl.
1. Don't look

**Writing children's imaginary adventures kinda makes me feel all warm and cozy.**

**I should say that my laptop kinda failed on me with the next chapter of Cherish still on it. I was hoping that it could be fixed and so started on this, but it looks like I'll have to rewrite the chapter, which I'll do. I swear. Eventually.**

**In the meantime, cute children drabbles! There will be others, I'm sure...  
**

* * *

"Prepare for landing!"

"Prepared for landing, sir!"

"How're the dogs?"

"Buckled down safely, sir." Carl caught the short glance that Ellie gave him and quickly tried to fix his error. "Uh, arf, bark arf!"

"They cert'nly sound lively!"

"Yes, sir."

"How's our altitude?"

"Five hundred…four hundred…three hundred…the wheels! Don't forget to put the wheels down!"

"I _didn't_ forget, silly, the wheels are this lever here!"

"Oh, uh, two hundred, one hundred…" Both children braced themselves for the imaginary jolt that accompanied plane landings.

"Another safe landing by Ellie and Carl!" The young girl leaped off the old, but sturdy log and tossed her fake leather flying helmet in the air in genuine exhilaration. As usual, her hat hair was a barber's nightmare, unkempt, uncombed, unrestrained. As she continued her celebratory hooting, Carl also slid off the log, his butt a little sore. Sitting on a log for almost an hour can do that to you.

"Press conference," he reminded his energetic friend.

"Oh, right!" A stump was suddenly relegated the honorable position of a podium. "Ahem," said Ellie into the twig/microphone. Carl did his best to stand up straight and beam proudly, although he was sure that it was an uncertain grin that was plastered on his face. "Ladies and gentermen! Boys and girls! My partner and I have made a new exciting discovery! An animal soooooo fright'nin', sooooooooo dang'rous, so unbelievably _cool_, we had to capture it with, uh, mirrors, and rockets, and, uh, iron box cages…and…"

"Ruff."

"…and of course, our trust, well-trained dog team! We call it the, uh…"

"Velcrusopter?"

"Velcrusopter! Yeah! Um…" Ellie whipped her head around wildly, her ragged bow threatening to fly off. Suddenly, she jumped on the Velcrusopter, which happened to be a sleepy, good-humored toad. Carl quickly hopped over the stump and turned around, wildly cheering and clapping as loudly as he could. Last time it had been a wandering turtle.

Ellie showed off the Velcrusopter to her large audience and bowed deeply with a confident smile, blowing kisses and thanking family members for making her what she was today.

Carl didn't mind playing second fiddle to all of Ellie's schemes. In fact, it was almost an unspoken agreement. The spotlight could be tempting, but it just wasn't for him. The spotlight was where people were looking and, if people looked too carefully at him, he was sure they wouldn't like what they saw.

It was his one fervent wish that Ellie never looked too carefully.

"Don't you ever wanna bow?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Alrighty."


	2. The Rules

**Aaaaah, writing these things makes me so happy inside. The stories are all so cute and fluffy...**

**...And at first I spelled Ellie's name wrong. I spelled it as her voice actress's name, Elie. Huzzah.  
**

* * *

"We've been goin' here longer 'n _you_ have!"

"Well, we got here first, so it's _our_ place now!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Uh-huh!"

Carl fidgeted nervously as the fight escalated into the dreaded 'nuh-uh, uh-huh' stage, where it would probably remain for a while until somebody got hurt. He was glad he wasn't alone. On the other side of the battlefield, Mikey's soldiers shuffled their feet, either uncomfortable about ganging up on two people, or uncomfortable about Elie in general.

Girls couldn't punch. It was a well known fact. But every boy had heard the story where Ellie didn't' punch _so hard_, that Big Andy fell flat on his back and bounced right back up from sheer momentum, missing a tooth or twenty.

Though it seemed Mikey thought it was a myth. He really wasn't letting up. Carl glanced at the old abandoned house. It looked like it needed at least six new coats of paint. The floor creaked so much that he almost was tempted to oil it. And sometimes his foot went through the wood if he wasn't careful and stood still for more than a second.

"Ellie," he whispered, trying to penetrate the wall of childish arguments.

"Nuh-uh!"

"Uh-huuuuuuuh!"

It didn't work. He shifted his weight and stared helplessly at the enemy soldiers, who gave a sympathetic look in return. The Captains continued their thought-provoking banter.

"Nuh-uh, nuh-uh, nuh-uh!"

"Ellie," Carl repeated a little louder, and this time she turned to him.

"What?" she asked impatiently, though apparently proud that she had gotten the last three words in before the interruption.

The meek boy flinched suddenly at the attention and stuttered, waiting for his scattered words to order themselves again. "We - well, uh, um, you know, uh, maybe we, uh, could find some other place?" An abandoned house that didn't look like it would collapse if a fly even dare to rest on it, preferably, though he wasn't able to say that. Instead, he wilted under the redhead's glare. "Uh, er, never mind…"

And with that, the two started once more.

"Nuh-uh!"

Mikey, realizing that not only did Ellie skip his turn, but this whole inane spat was dragging on far too long, finally couldn't stop himself and punched the girl with a strong uppercut. Nobody gasped, but there was a sort of dramatic-gaspy-feeling in the air and everything seemed to freeze, Mikey still had his arm raised as his expression gradually changed to one of horror. Ellie sat up, rubbing her jaw. Her eyes had started tearing up, probably from the pain when her head hit the sidewalk.

He had broken The Unspoken Rules, the universal laws that every good boy followed. The punishments were terrible if he didn't, ranging from The Inescapable Glares to The Cold Shoulder. But this was beyond even social estrangement. He punched a girl. He made a girl cry. In the history of boydom, Carl had never known anybody who did that. This had to be a first. Had anybody even made official punishments for this occurrence?

Setting a precedent for years to come, Carl leapt on Mikey.

When he woke up, he noticed he couldn't see much of anything. His glasses were somewhere besides perched on his nose. His head pounded, so instead of scrabbling for them, he kept still and stared at the fuzzy ceiling through half-shut eyes. Maybe he'll go to sleep again…

A blurry monster entered his field of vision. "Wow, you're not dead!" Oh, wait, that's Ellie. "Mom! You can stop callin' those hospital guys now!"

Let's see…he was pretty sure he knew where he was. Ellie's house. It was his first time here. Too bad he could barely see anything. He was pretty sure it was still the same day, just perhaps an hour later at the most. He was fairly certain he knew how he got knocked out. That just left… "What happened?"

"You jumped onto Mikey and punched his face a lot! I didn't know y' had it in ya! You were really awesome, 'til Mikey knocked you out with one hit with his meaty fist. He broke yer glasses too. So I slugged him and the others went running and I was wond'rin' if you were dead so I got the wagon and dragged you here, and then you woke up and here we are." Carl just made out a shrug. "Oh yeah! Hold still a sec." Suddenly, the blurry form of Ellie slapped something over his eye. The sting made him yelp and almost sit up.

"Sorry, it's meat fer your eye. We would've used steak, but we didn't have any, so we just got some meat stuff."

Carl lay on the lumpy couch, ground beef dripping down his cheek. He really shouldn't just lie there. Not only would his hair probably smell of meat for days, but this was completely against The Unspoken Rules. Being Cared For By A Girl instead of Taking It Like A Man was punishable by Unrelenting Taunting. If word of this got out, he would get picked on (more so than usual) until he was like…in college or something. He should get up. He should insist that he's fine. He should go home and wash the meat off his face.

…But still, as Ellie ran off for salves and bandages, he couldn't help but get comfortable on the couch. Sometimes there had to be exceptions to the rules. Right?


	3. Halloween

**Hey, guys, happy Halloween!**

* * *

The night had that eerie chill of the supernatural, or at least the barely-natural. Witches and goblins and ghouls were out tonight, happily galumphing to and fro, doing such wicked and mystical deeds as bothering people and threatening them to give up their sweets or they may wake up in toilet paper land. They walked around carrying sacks and bags and pillow cases filled with unknown trinkets. Bats, maybe, or spiders, or maybe even kidnapped children. But most likely candy.

And Carl watched them all from his room. It was always a good feeling to watch from above, like a ruler or a god watching the insignificant subjects roam the streets, but only when you were sure you weren't missing out on something. Protected by the cold air, Carl was missing out on Halloween.

It wasn't anything new. He should have been used to being confined in the house, finishing up a sugar free dinner and helping with the dishes. Candy-begging was for the homeless and the immature, not serious, literate kids like himself. His parents at least gave out something to these costumed brats.

They were the ones that gave out things like apples and pencils. One year, they were feeling particularly bitter and gave out slips of paper that said 'GROW UP' in large red letters. Around this time of year, Carl was usually picked on. He knew he almost deserved it, though he sorely wished his parents would be punished for their gross sin instead.

Tired of twisting his innards with envy, Carl wandered downstairs, where his father was reading a book and his mother was methodically drying dishes. They had the matching cold expressions of bored frogs, showing no notice that they knew you-know-what was going on outside, but once in a while their eyes would flicker to the door, as if daring any poor kid on the other side to knock. A worn paper bag stood on a side table near the door, and Carl peeked into it. This year it was lemon juice sitting innocently in lemonade cartons. They really didn't want anybody coming.

To satisfy his parents, Carl sat down at the living room couch, a seat away from his father, and took a book titled 'Mathematics For Young Mathematicians.' Silence reigned the Fredricksen abode. Not even the happiness of children penetrated their fortress. There was only the sound of drying dishes and the turn of a page when Carl remembered to.

And then there was a knock at the door, strangely confident. Usually, the knocks, if there were any, said 'Why did I do this' or 'Why did I accept that dare' or 'I hope I won't have to go through therapy again because of this.'

His parents glanced at each other, engaging in a quick, silent war before his mother lost and marched sluggishly to the paper bag. She flung the door open, unleashing the torrent of condescension, and said, "Oh. I didn't expect you to visit, Ellie. Here. Have one."

To Carl's surprise, his parents didn't dislike Ellie. In fact, they enjoyed having her around, and when she left, they would gleefully point out everything she did wrong. She was an Example of what Carl shouldn't be. The boy wasn't sure if Ellie knew this happened behind her back. He was too embarrassed to tell her.

Ellie seemed to have taken the pseudo-greeting and the pseudo-lemonade as an invitation inside and slipped under his mother's arm, shouting 'Carl! Carl!' Carl looked up from the wall of text (shouldn't math books have _numbers_ in them?), making sure not to look up too far in case he met his mother's disapproving face. She could purse her lips like nobody's business. Sometimes Carl was afraid that she would eventually purse her whole face.

"C'mon! Ya hafta come, it's gonna be really cool - "

"I'm afraid, Ellie, that Carl has some work to do," said Carl's father from his seat. The words 'unlike you' seemed to hang invisibly in the air.

Ellie halted. Apparently, she had never considered the option that her friend wouldn't be allowed to go. She tossed the pseudo-lemonade from hand to hand for a bit before slowly saying, "I gotcha, sorry fer both'rin' ya an' all." As discreetly as a tap-dancing elephant, she winked. Carl was grateful that his mother could only purse her lips at the young girl's back and that his father wasn't even looking up from his book.

Carl waited for several long minutes before noisily grabbing more math books and trudging up the stairs. Once he reached his room, he dropped everything and opened his window. Ellie was waiting below, hissing 'hurry up' as he quickly arranged some books on his bed, threw a quilt over them, and turned off the lamp. What else, what else…ah yes. He stuffed the familiar hat and goggles over his head. Now he could step out onto the shingles that shielded the porch...oh wait, better close the window a bit too. Okay, good.

Carl eased himself onto the yard as carefully as he could. He quickly lost his footing and almost broke his neck.

"C'mon, c'mon!" Ellie tugged him up on his feet once more and they were off.

He wasn't sure where they were going. They could join the masses in the persistent search for more candy. Or maybe they would hang around a party, telling scary stories. All that really mattered was that he was free, outside, with Ellie.

"Um, uh, I would throw that…'lemonade' away."


	4. Stargazing

**I've written this a while ago, but I was a bit too embarrassed to share it. Then my sister punched me in the arm for being such a downer.**

**So here it is. This is probably the most Carl has talked in these drabbles. I don't even know where I was going with this. I was just thinking about stargazing coupled with the end of summer. It's not even poignant. It's not even long.**

**I'm running out of ideas for young Carl and Elie, so I'll probably start touching on teen Carl and Elie. Yay.**

* * *

"That one's Pegasus."

"Huh? Where?"

"Over there…the horse with wings."

"I got no idea what you're lookin' at. 'S just a bunch of dots."

"No look, those are the wings--"

"Then those are small wings!" Carl shifted, his arms feeling all tingly from the grass underneath. The hill the two children lay on was the highest they knew, a place that was quite a hike away from their houses. It was the best place for star gazing.

"No, you hafta, well, it's something you imagine. You _imagine_ feathery wings…"

"Well, then can't it be something else? How do guys decide these things?"

"It says it's Pegasus in all the books I've read. Scientists and stuff say it's Pegasus."

"Well I say they're dumb." Elie squinted at the night sky, attempting to find a picture that made sense. "That's nothin' but dots."

"Well…what about Orion? There's his belt…that's his sword…"

"Oh, I see that! Why's he headless?"

"He's not."

"Well, I don't see a head." Carl realized that their conversation was starting to circle back and decided to not pursue the subject.

"Up there's the North Star."

Elie nodded solemnly. "That's pretty north alright."

"Yeah. And then if you look a little beyond it there….that's the Big Dipper."

"What's a 'dipper' supposed to be?"

"Um, kinda like a ladle. Except square, I think."

For a few seconds, the only sounds were the rustling grass and unseen crickets singing the night away. "Reminds me of a wheelbarrel."

"Oh yeah? Where're the wheels?" asked Carl teasingly. He giggled when Elie threw grass at him. The redhead grew silent once more as he spat out the weeds and shook the strands of grass from his glasses. Finally, though she seemed reluctant to, Elie started up a different subject.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"…You finish summer homework?"

Carl had finished it ages ago. But something told him to say, "No."

She relaxed beside him and taunted, with relief in her voice, "Schools tomorrow, y'know. How're ya gonna finish?"

Carl chuckled. "I dunno." And they both fell back into a satisfied silence, wiggling their bare feet in the cool, fresh grass, gazing at the sky on the last day of summer.


	5. First Date

**Aaah, teens. I've never been on a date yet, so I fell on the usual cliches of angry fathers and embarrassing mothers. Aaah. Youth.**

* * *

He had been to this house many times over the years, but this was the first time he actually had to force himself to step in. It just seemed…so…_threatening_. He never noticed before.

His dad's car was carefully parked three inches from the curb. Exactly. Those months of drivers lessons paid off immensely. He told his dad they were just going to the movies and his dad tossed him the keys and gruffly told him that if there was a scratch on the car, he'd personally punch his face in. And ground him for life. And possibly disown him.

He may have been joking about punching his face in, but he wasn't sure about the other stuff.

And that's not even getting into Ellie's dad.

Was his hair still combed? His vest straight? Tie on right? Bouquet all nice-looking? Did he look respectable? Oh god, maybe he couldn't do this. Maybe he should just turn back before he was run off by a gun-totting Mr. Docter and go home in a scratched car and get disowned.

But Carl sucked it in, sneezed out pollen, and strode timidly towards Ellie's house.

Mr. Docter answered, glaring at him as if finally noticing Carl as he truly was: a daughter-stealer. The grizzled man appraised the bespectacled kid for the first time, wondering to himself if _this_ was the man to whom he wanted to entrust his sweet little blossom, his darling little angel, his sweetie-pumpkin.

Carl wasn't used to having his very soul searched and coughed nervously before offering his hand. "H-hello, sir," the young man managed to stutter out. This did not seem to impress him. When Mr. Docter went to shake his hand, he stayed limp while the man shook strongly. Another dark looked crossed his face and Carl winced. That was a few more points off the test.

"Well, uh, sir." Man, over the past few years, he had _never_ called Mr. Docter 'sir.' This was so…strange. "I'm, uh, I planned a date with your daughter, sir, and…um…it's only a movie. There's, um, absolutely _no _funny business involved. Besides," Carl said, a chuckle in his voice. "I'm sure Ellie would beat me up…"

That dark look again. Talking lightly about his sweetie-pie. Ten-point penalty.

"Um." And the nervousness was back, the dry mouth, the closed throat god if this is what dating's like, he's gonna have to pass on marriage. "The movie, um, just a little, uh, Disney. Snow White. I'll, uh, when the movie's done, I'll drive Ellie home straightaway and make sure she comes back, uh, before nine."

A nice, safe, family movie. Five points.

And now comes the loving, fatherly threats. "I know where you live, _boy_, and I swear, if this ain't my darlin' angel's bestday _ever_, I will _personally_ march over t' yer house with my gun and _shoot_ you square between the eyes. _We clear?_"

Carl gulped. "Crystal." It was at that moment the ever-radiant Ellie decided to descend the steps.

Her dress was as pure as dove feathers. Carl would have looked at it more, but Mr. Docter was watching him and he had to avert his stare lest the man take his gun out right that instant.

Carl tried to approach her without looking at her in the wrong way, and ended up sidling up, almost crashing into a corner. "Hey, Ell—Miss, uh, Doc—Ell--…Ellie," the teen mumbled a little miserably, feeling his score drop into the negatives. Ellie giggled, apparently not aware of anything happening between her father and her boyfriend.

"Flowers? Aw, you shouldn't have! Here, daddy, can ya put these in a vase?" The bouquet was whisked out of Carl's hands and shoved into Mr. Docter's. His face had melted into a kind and warm expression at the sight of his daughter, and he found himself unable to pull her aside, tell her that her boyfriend was, frankly, a spineless weenie, and then lock her in a safe tower away from all these _boys._ Instead, he mumbled an affirmative, glared at Carl one last time, and went to go look for a vase.

Then Mrs. Docter descended like a hawk, camera in hand, and blinded the two lovebirds with a surprise picture.

"Mooooom," Ellie whined, though she was still grinning wildly. "You're embarrassing me!"

"Oh, don't mind me, sweetie, I'm just recording this for my grandchildren," Mrs. Docter chuckled behind red-polished nails.

Carl felt himself turn red and Ellie let out another exasperated "Mooooooom!" before turning back to Carl with a 'Parents. What're ya gonna do?' look. Carl responded by tapping his watch gently.

"Oh my gosh! We're gonna be late!" Ellie hopped around in her little white dress, looking around for a purse, a brush, all those strange things girls thought they needed to bring everywhere. "Bye mom, bye dad! See ya later!" Carl waved a polite good-bye as well before being dragged out the door.

"Bye sweetie!" Mrs. Docter called from the door, her husband standing right beside her, still glaring at Carl. "Tell us about the movie later!" The two teens jumped into the car and drove off, carefully obeying the speed limit, of course.

The further he drove from his girlfriend's house, the less anxious Carl became until he found he was no longer clutching the wheel like it was attached to him. With a small, nervous grin, he said, "For my sake, Ellie, please let this be your best day ever."


End file.
